John Buchan: Trending quotes

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John Buchan: 290 quotes3 likes

“Mrs. Brisbane-Brown was a relic, but only the unthinking would have called her a snob. For snobbishness implies some sense of insecurity, and she was perfectly secure.”

John Buchan book Castle Gay

Source: Castle Gay (1930), Ch. 6

“[A] falsehood, which may be pardoned if it is to save another, is black sin if used by a coward to save himself.”

John Buchan book Witch Wood

Source: Witch Wood (1927), Ch. XIV "The Counterblast"

“He knew nothing accurately about any subject in the world, but he could clothe his ignorance in pontifical garments and give his confusion the accents of authority. He had a remarkable flair for discerning and elaborating the tiny quantum of popular knowledge on any matter.”

John Buchan book Castle Gay

Source: Castle Gay (1930), Ch. 2

“Perfect love casteth out fear, the Bible says; but, to speak it reverently, so does perfect hate.”

John Buchan book Prester John

Source: Prester John (1910), Ch. IX

“It was foreordained that I should go alone to Umvelos', and in the promptings of my own infallible heart I believed I saw the workings of Omnipotence. Such is our moral arrogance, and yet without such a belief I think that mankind would have ever been content to bide sluggishly at home.”

John Buchan book Prester John

Source: Prester John (1910), Ch. X

“It was a very happy time, but like all happy times it had no landmarks.”

John Buchan book A Lodge in the Wilderness

Source: A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906), Ch. X, p. 268

“I always try to suit my clothes to my company. It is the only way to be inconspicuous.”

John Buchan book The House of the Four Winds

Prologue
The House of the Four Winds (1935)

“Peace is that state in which fear of any kind is unknown.”

John Buchan

Pilgrim's Way (1940), p. 117
Memory Hold-The-Door (1940)

“Public life is regarded as the crown of a career, and to young men it is the worthiest ambition. Politics is still the greatest and the most honorable adventure.”

John Buchan

Pilgrim’s Way (1940)
Memory Hold-The-Door (1940)

“Statesmanship […] must consider first the fortunes of the common people. No statesman has a right to risk these fortunes unless he be reasonably assured of success.”

John Buchan

Source: Midwinter (1923), Ch. II

“He knew less about women than he knew about the physics of hyperspace.”

John Buchan book The House of the Four Winds

Source: The House of the Four Winds (1935), Ch. XI

“He never went mad in your sense. My dear fellow, you're very much wrong if you think there was anything pathological about him — then. The man was brilliantly sane. His mind was as keen as a keen sword. I couldn't understand him, but I could judge of his sanity right enough.”

John Buchan

Space (1912)

“Too young for wife, too old for child, but the ripe age for comrade — and such a comrade, for there was a boy's gallantry in her eyes and something of a child's confident fearlessness.”

John Buchan

Source: Midwinter (1923), Ch. XVII

“The law and the constitution are like a child's pants. They've got to be made wider and longer as the child grows so as to fit him. If they're kept too tight, he'll burst them; and if you're in a hurry and make them too big all at once, they'll trip him up.”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

Source: The Path of the King (1921), Ch. XIV "The End of the Road", I

“The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.”

John Buchan

Montrose and Leadership (1930), p 24; republished in Men and Deeds (1977)

“Honest intention will not cure faulty practice.”

John Buchan book Witch Wood

Source: Witch Wood (1927), Ch. III "Guests in Calidon Tower"

“He realised how oddly detached he was. […] He enjoyed every moment, but he knew that his enjoyment came largely from standing a little apart. He was not a cynic, for there was no sourness in him. He had a kindliness towards most things, and a large charity. But he did not take sides. He had not accepted any mood, or creed, or groove of his own. Vix ea nostra voco [I scarcely call these things our own] was his motto. He was only a seeker […] occupied in finding out what was in his soul.”

John Buchan book Castle Gay

Source: Castle Gay (1930), Ch. 20

“[L]oyalty and religion have many meanings, and self-interest is a skilled interpreter.”

John Buchan

Source: Midwinter (1923), Ch. I

“You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn.”

John Buchan book The Power-House

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 3 "Tells of a Midsummer Night"

“The Scottish Communist is a much misunderstood person. When he is a true Caledonian, and not a Pole or an Irishman, he is simply the lineal descendant of the old Radical. The Scottish Radical was a man who held a set of inviolable principles on which he was entirely unable to compromise. It did not matter what the principles were; the point was that they were like the laws of Sinai, which could not be added to or subtracted from. When the Liberal party began to compromise, he joined Labour; when Labour began to compromise, by a natural transition he became a Communist. Temperamentally he has not changed. He is simply the stuff which in the seventeenth century made the unyielding Covenanter, and in the eighteenth the inflexible Jacobite. He is honesty incarnate, but his mind lacks flexibility.”

John Buchan book Castle Gay

Source: Castle Gay (1930), Ch. 14